


Seen Your Flag on the Marble Arch

by PanBoleyn



Series: Legend Awakening [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Age Changes, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Force Awakens/Star Wars Legends Fusion, Gen, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-15 01:30:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5766760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanBoleyn/pseuds/PanBoleyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of Starkiller Base, three reflections on recent events and what they mean - or don't mean, as it might be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seen Your Flag on the Marble Arch

**Author's Note:**

> So here's the thing. I loved Force Awakens, it was excellent. That being said, there are things from the old EU, now called Legends, that I loved as much if not more. I am not quite ready to accept their nonexistence in the main timeline, so have a fusion! Mostly I will be drawing on Timothy Zahn's work from the Legends side, with good odds on there also being some of Stackpole and Jude Watson on the side of the YA books. (Although the prequel-era EU may still be canon EU, I'm not sure.)
> 
> On the ages of Anakin and Jaina, I'll admit that was mostly whim; I'm so used to Jacen and Jaina that Ben and Jaina felt jarring for me (even though Ben functionally kind of is Jacen) so I made Anakin Ben's twin instead and had Jaina as the younger single-birth sibling.

It's the middle of the night when the man calling himself Nikos launches himself out of bed, barely making it to the toilet before being violently sick. Ben. Ben, and... And Dad. _Oh Force, he killed him..._

 

 

Nikos was a twin, once. He had a different name, and a brother with dancing brown eyes. He was jealous of that brother who always managed to pick up everything in the Force faster than he could – their little sister just as quick – but he'd comforted himself that none of them knew their way around an engine or a computer the way he did. _Everyone has their gifts_ , their uncle said, _and you take after your father – and your namesake too, as a boy._

 

 

His father. Ben killed their father. No, _Kylo Ren_ killed their father. Nikos' brother is gone, for true now. What little may have been left of Ben vanished the second his saber claimed their father's life. Nikos thinks of his brother, when they both had different names. They weren't quite identical, Ben's hair wavy where his was straight, Ben's dark eyes to his own blue. But their faces had been almost the same, their voices identical.

 

 

And where Ben was, there Nikos had been as his shadow, in the days when he was someone else. He'd been content to be the quiet one, Ben bright and loud enough for them both. And their sister, of course, sharp and fierce and everything their mother was.

 

 

His family thinks he's dead. This is something Nikos knows, and if he could he would reach out, just so they'd know he's still alive. He doesn't think he'd go back, he still feels he's too much of a wreck to do that, but he would like them to know he's still here. Except he can't. His father was a will o' the wisp, a smuggler who couldn't be pinned down, his mother is the leader of the Resistance and his sister is with her, both of them on well-hidden bases somewhere. His uncle is a legend spoken of in whispers, maybe alive on some distant planet and maybe dead. Force knows where his aunt is – with the smuggler she used to work for, maybe, but Nikos can't remember his name any more than he remembers his aunt's name. He knows she had red hair and a wicked smile, and her hands were sure when she helped him with an engine or showed her own daughter what they were doing.

 

 

He can't remember his cousin's name either.

 

 

It aches, these things he does not know, as much as the things he does know. And now he knows that his father is dead, that his father was murdered by one son and knowing that complete betrayal, murdered believing his other son already dead.

 

 

The sickness is replaced by tears, great choking sobs because he was both of them in his dream, he was his father in his last moment and he was Kylo Ren thinking himself finally free of Ben Solo. But Nikos will never be free of _Anakin_ Solo, even if he can only remember half of what it meant to _be_ Anakin.

 

 

\---

 

 

It's a victory. They've destroyed the First Order's superweapon, they have a new potential Jedi, they are not out of this fight even with the Hosnian system lost and the casualties they must now confront among Resistance ranks. So Jaina Organa tells herself even as she informs her trainees of the outcome of the recent battle.

 

 

She must be as stone, inscrutable and firm, because these new recruits look to her to be convinced that joining the Resistance is what needs to be done. She cannot afford the flashes of humanity her mother can show – Leia Organa has been a leader since she could talk, and it shows in her every gesture. She has a long, impressive track record, and so when she shows her softer side it's seen as a privilege to witness. Jaina is young yet, and this is her first role away from her mother's side.

 

 

And so she cannot react to the fact that the man who was once her brother has murdered her father. She cannot show that in the moment it happened, she felt it – and she saw, behind her closed eyes, a young man sobbing on a floor who might have been Anakin if Anakin weren't dead. And she would not show that in any case, because she refuses to believe it meant anything.

 

 

She has no use for the Force. It destroyed her brothers and left behind a monster and a corpse they never found, it sent her uncle racing to the edges of the galaxy. Jaina has a use for the pilots and infantry she trains, because they are the ones who will win this war. Maybe this new potential Jedi can defeat Kylo Ren and Snoke – it wouldn't be the first time such a thing has happened, after all. But that didn't fix anything in the end, so Jaina isn't about to look to this girl Rey as a savior. She might help, that's all, but in the end, it's the armies who will decide.

 

 

And if she has anything to say about it, it will be the Resistance fighters who win when it matters.

 

 

\---

 

 

“We've had a transmission from Leia,” Shada says, voice almost too careful as she sits down across from Mara. They're in the _Wild Karrde's_ kitchen, in the middle of ship's night, and the words of her friend are the only thing breaking the silence. Mara doesn't look up from her cup, doesn't say a word. She didn't need her sister-in-law to send a message, doesn't need Shada to tell her what that message is.

 

 

She knows. Her daughter.

 

 

Leaving her on Jakku had been the last thing Mara had ever wanted. But she'd seen it, more times than she could count, had seen it was the only way. She'd wondered, then and every day until this day, if she'd been wrong. Now she knows she was right, and it is the coldest comfort she can imagine. Her daughter doesn't remember her, her daughter grew up struggling to survive every single day. Mara was raised to be a weapon, but at least she'd been reasonably safe, reasonably happy. Happy in a lie, yes, but...

 

 

She'd wanted to give her daughter the reality of what she'd believed herself to have, a home where she was treasured and loved. The kind of life Luke had led, on a Tatooine moisture farm with his aunt and uncle. But thinking of Luke always brings back the painful tangle of love, fury, and longing that Mara tries to suppress, so she doesn't think of him.

 

 

“There's more to it than – Padme,” Shada says, carefully.

 

 

“Her name isn't Padme anymore,” Mara says quietly. _Your name is Rey_ , she had told her daughter again and again, until Padme had believed she was Rey now. She will probably believe it for the rest of her life, even if Mara gets the chance to tell her otherwise. Gets the chance to apologize for all she'd had to do. “I don't care what else Leia had to say, Shada. Not tonight.”

 

 

Shada and her lover are the ones who care about information – Mara told Karrde once that knowing things was like their shared bed partner, and Karrde had only laughed and agreed. Tomorrow, Mara imagines that she will care about it, but not tonight. Tomorrow she imagines that she will be glad she was right to protect her daughter by letting her go, by following the Force and the knowledge that she had to make things happen this way.

 

 

 

But in the end, Mara has now followed the Light longer than the Dark, and there is one thing she's learned, a thing that has never been more true than it was the day she abandoned her child, than it is tonight. For all its truth, the light is not always comforting, not always gentle. And far too often, it burns.

 


End file.
